MobX is one of the many state management tools available to React developers. In this tutorial, we’re going to learn how to use MobX to manage state in React Native applications by building a React Native application to see how this is done.
State management is an integral part of developing JavaScript applications especially React and React Native applications. In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to use the MobX library for state management; understand the core concepts, some use cases and build a simple example.
Note: Basic knowledge of Javascript and React Native will be of great benefit as you work through this tutorial.
Using MobX In React Applications
State is the data that your component(s) is working with — it holds the data that a component requires and it dictates what a component renders. State management is the process of managing how the state gets updated and passed from one component to another. Monitoring and working with data in an application can be difficult and that’s the need for state management libraries. Handling all the data for your application can be a little daunting especially when your application grows in size and complexity, building your own state management tool is not just time-consuming but difficult, This is why you might want to use a state management library.
However, it is important to know that state isn’t the only data that a component renders, components can also render props passed down to it.
Options For State Management
State management libraries for React Native applications include; React Context API, Redux, MobX and Unstated Next.
Although these state managers each have their advantages and disadvantages, I personally recommend MobX because of its simplicity, minimal boilerplate code — it doesn’t require you change your code, this is because in its core, MobX is and looks like JavaScript; you don’t need a change of architecture to support it (unlike Redux and to a lesser extent Context).
In fact it’s such an invisible abstraction that in many cases if you take out all of the MobX code — the @observable, @computed, @action and observer decorators, your code will work exactly the same (though it’ll have some performance issues) and it’s not limited to a global state. These are some reasons to go forward with MobX as a state manager of choice for your React Native applications.
Although it’s also important to note some issues with using MobX as a state manager, some of which include its avoidance of rules on how to implement it and MobX can be difficult to debug especially when you change state directly in a component without using the @actions parameter.
What Is MobX?
According to the official documentation, MobX is a battle-tested library that makes state management simple and scalable by transparently applying functional reactive programming. MobX treats your application like a spreadsheet. The logic is that Anything that can be derived from the application state, should be done automatically.
MobX state architecture. (Large preview)
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